Why is Connect more expensive than Play?

at the moment i have a airport express that connects my nas/itunes to my stereo. i was thinking about adding a corresponding sonos device, so that i can use sonos for every room. but i don´t see a reason to spend additional 400 eur for the connect- and i am satisfied with the sound i get from airplay. as i have to manage playlists in itunes, i will stick with the airplay solution, until i see why the connect makes more sense and is worth the extra expense- so i vote with my feet 😉

The weird thing from my perspective is how it sticks out like a sore thumb aesthetically in my very humble stack of home audio/video gear. That little white box just doesn't seem to fit into the "high end" enthusiast space the way one poster implied.

Yes, I'm not keen on the aesthetics, either - a 'standard' format in black would have been much more acceptable personally - but then everyone's different.

Regarding the price of a connect, in many ways they're good value for money. I take the points about comparison with the amplified models, but like others feel that the Play:3 is currently more of a 'loss (or at least low profit) leader'.

Component cost and manufacturing costs come into it, but software support must also be an expensive part of the overall package. I haven't seen anyone else producing a similar quality package for similar money. I only have a ZP90, feeding my AV amp. OK, I chose to use a NAS as well, but it could have worked on any wired PC/laptop.

So for about £260 I have a very good streaming system that most people find really easy to use via a number of popular devices - I call that excellent value, personally.

Welcome to the forums.

Actually the Play:3 is pretty much the Sonos market penetration vehicle. It's in all kinds of retail outlets, many of whom would see the Connect as being for audiophiles and wouldn't carry it.

If you were thinking of looking for a Connect/ZP90 on eBay you'll find the price holds up (supported undoubtedly by the standard retail price) and you won't get much change from £220.

I think what people forget is that with one sonos device - including the connect - you get all of the streaming capabilities. You could take a decades old setup and instantly have access to a whole world of music. It's changed the way I listen to music. I went from from the 70's to 2012 instantly.

I have a modest library of music (20 gb) on my iPad. I NEVER use it. With a $10/month subscription to RDIO I can listen to just about anything I want. Plus, I discover new music every day through Sonos.

To use Sonos to just listen to your old library of music through a Connect would seem like a $400 remote control. To use Sonos as a gateway to the world of music AND have access to your old system is worth way more than $400, in my opinion.

That is, if your using the connect with an A/V receiver connected to speakers AND you are using Play 3/5 speakers, your music will simply be out of sync, because the A/V receiver introduces processing and the sonos system does not have a very simple feature such as establishing an x amount of delay before the music is sent to the Play speakers.



Not all A/V receivers have a delay, and on those that do introduce a delay, very many have a "Direct" mode which bypasses any DSP. To post as if a delay is unavoidable in every A/V receiver is incorrect and misleading.

Except Airplay doesn't sync at all and will still have a delay if using an AV receiver.
If you're lucky maybe the lack of sync exactly compensates for the delay in the AVR. 😉

That's the fault of the AV receiver, not Sonos.



Except Airplay doesn't sync at all and will still have a delay if using an AV receiver.

Sonos then better wake up and improve its software, because it looks like all A/V receivers are being built this way. As times goes by, it will look more and more like "hey, it's not my fault, it's all these other people who are driving in the wrong direction".

Regarding Airplay of course is not in sync neither it promises to be, but it's free, while Sonos is not in sync as well now and it costs 50x more. So why pay for it?
At the moment i'm stuck with an overpriced connect and two Play5 speakers which costs more than 1k$ and are utterly useless.

So you perfectly happy not to have syncing at all, if you're not paying for it (you are paying for btw...) but you're going to ***** like crazy because you can't do something that apparently you're not that fussed about? Make your mind up, either you want syncing or you don't.



And now you're just talking ****e, are you saying you have two Play 5s AND a connect all in the same room and all playing at the same time, ALL the time?

My reasoning is pretty straightforward.

Yes i want the syncing, and this is why i paid a whole loads of money into a Sonos system, because accordingly to Sonos its system is able to play in perfect sync.

As a matter of fact, this is simply not true. Because if you use the Sonos Connect, something that THEY sell for the exact purpose to be connected to an existing A/V receiver, the audio is not in sync. Plain and simple.

Now, what Sonos can do is either one of the two:
A) Specify this and list the "compatible" A/V receivers that allow the user not to suffer from this issue (which is basically "any A/V receiver produced before 2011")
😎 Specify that if a user is willing to have music played in sync across Sonos own Play speakers and Sonos own Connect device, this won't work.

Given the situation, if someone is interested into the Sonos system because of its supposedly perfect sync feature, this feature does not exist anymore in the case you are using a setup composed of a Sonos Connect linked to a modern A/V receiver and any of own Sonos Play speakers.

As modern receivers are airplay enabled and there are plenty of speakers which are airplay enabled as well, you do the math: no reason to spend money on Sonos in this case.

That is, unless they are able to simply add a delay slider in their control app.

Then if you want me to tell that the solution is that we are not supposed to use any modern A/V receiver, or to use our 5.1 setups in a 2.0 setup, or to use either our A/V OR the Plays, be my guest, but Sonos is selling a system that is supposed -among other things- to do exactly this: play your music in sync across all devices. And it simply does not.

But hey, maybe we should call Yamaha, Pioneer, Onkyo, and all the other 10s of A/V receiver builders and explain them that their system suck because it does not work well with the Sonos Connect. My guess is that it should be Sonos to fix this.

As a matter of fact, this is simply not true. Because if you use the Sonos Connect, something that THEY sell for the exact purpose to be connected to an existing A/V receiver, the audio is not in sync. Plain and simple.
I dare say that Sonos will have this matter somewhere on their to-do list, but I'd just make a couple of points:

The CONNECT (and its predecessor the ZP80) is not sold for the 'exact purpose' of connecting to an AVR. It's sold for those with existing -- often high quality -- amplification (and optionally outboard DAC) and speaker systems. Many are the contributors to these forums who run their CONNECT/ZP90/ZP80 into high-end HiFi setups. In such situations sync with Play:* units is probably very much secondary, and when sync is used the Play boxes are probably in a different room anyhow.

The audio IS in sync, at the outputs of the Sonos players. To say this is not the case is simply not true. Sonos have never claimed that at the end of whatever digital reproduction chain a user chooses to bolt on the end of the player the audio will still be in sync. How could they when it's outside their control.

So, a delay setting is a legitimate request and one I'd personally support. But don't let's get into distorting the truth to justify it.

Your initial post on this thread was titled "Connect is a device that does not work anymore". Well the last time I looked my four ZP80s were working just fine thank you.

The request thread for a delay feature has been in existence for 7.5 years. If Sonos saw this issue as a "huge flaw" they would have done something about it long ago.

As it happens the ask.sonos thread shows it as "under consideration", i.e. on their to-do list with uncertain timeframe.

My reasoning is pretty straightforward.

Yes i want the syncing, and this is why i paid a whole loads of money into a Sonos system, because accordingly to Sonos its system is able to play in perfect sync.

Answer the question, are all your Zoneplayers in the same room? Because if they aren't you're probably not even going to hear the delay introduced by the AV receiver.

No, 90% of 2012/2013 receivers, including ALL most popular (Yamaha, Onkyo, etc.) and high-end receivers, have a delay which is simply driven by the processing happening inside the receiver. And this will be more and more true as time goes by.
Secondly, the "direct" mode simply reduces the delay, while having the "little" drawback that you seem to forget that if you have, say a 5.1 or 7.1 system connected to your A/V receiver with the direct mode on you are left with a pure 2.0 speaker set. Wow, what a party.

Simple truth is that at the moment the Sonos system is not usable if you are planning to listen to music from both your expensive latest gen A/V via Sonos connect AND a Play speaker at the same time.
If Sonos is able to introduce a programmable delay to be placed before the Plays start playing it will still be an expensive but worthwile system, if not it will have forever lost one of the very single point of differences vs. the infinitely cheaper airplay solution (that is, perfect sync).

Ohhhh, so the fact that "90%" of the latest model year of receivers does this (an observation which more than likely was plucked out of thin air) justifies your statement and rebuts mine how?

Ohhhh, so the fact that "90%" of the latest model year of receivers does this (an observation which more than likely was plucked out of thin air) justifies your statement and rebuts mine how?

Genuinely, do you have some problem?

I understand you have no issue with your Sonos setup and i'm happy for you, but can't you really see the issue for other users?
Is it so hard to imagine a big room where there it sits one of those immensely popular A/V receivers connected with Sonos to a big 5.1 or 7.1 system, and in the same ambient a couple of play speakers, and you can't use both?
Or, is it so hard to imagine a veranda with an A/V system in it, and a garden outside with some Play speakers?

How does the fact that you don't have a problem disable your mental capability to see the problem for other users?

It's like i'm saying "this car starts cracking when i pass 100mph, there's a problem", and you answer "idiot there's no problem, i travel at 90mph perfectly fine what are you complaining about".